Sunday, June 09, 2013

I am not from Sombaykha

Sangbaykha used to be the name of just our Geog until the establishment of Dungkhag. Our community had

Our School sign board.....

been kept away from much of the 'romance of modern development' mainly because of its geographical location or may be sparse population. The people thrived on with our field harvests and very recently few into business ventures. Ever since I remember, we had been to proud to pronounce the name of our village (Sangbaykha). It literally means, the Hidden Land of Guru Rinpoche. We have sacred Pilgrim of Guru Rinpoche (at Lowhena-the land of Doyabs), which in reality is not close to our village as most of the fellow countrymen suppose. It will still take almost a day for some people or three-quarter of a day for others to reach the Pilgrimage.

As mentioned, the name Sangbaykha explicitly means, the hidden land of Guru Rinpoche. One teacher from our village pointed out to me the the transformation of the name SANGBAYKHA to Sombaykha. I just realized that he was correct.

The Election Commission of Bhutan (ECB) has recorded it as 'Sombaykha' since the first parliamentary election in 2008. I just wondered how they got it. Who misspelled it? Whoever did that, if he/she paid some attention to reflect accuracy of phonetic transliteration, it could have easily been avoided. Election ads made it worse. People throughout the country see us as Sombebs rather than Sangbebs. It is even escalated by our honorable ex-Opposition Leader through social media considering his popularity (where he writes, .... MP from Sombaykha Constituency).

All the things including language itself changes with time. But ours is of difference. They did it before time and I am little upset. It is not only our Geog that is being misspelled but many other smaller villages within. I see the negligence and failure from administrative officials to uphold the importance of local inhabitants. May be our people don't take it consciously at the moment and they took it for granted. But for individual like me it is of paramount importance to have right village name. For example, in India there were renaming (which has to be approved by central Government) of major cities like Culcutta-Kolkata, Madra-Tamil Nadu, etc. after independence (1947) to make it more consistent and accurately reflect their local names.

I am trying to literally convince you all that Sombaykha does not contain any meaning reference to our village per se, but is just a random name.In close lookout, Sombaykha, when translated into Dzongkha, is not even the nearby word with actual name of our village.

It is definitely a not major issue to be addressed urgently, but still, this trivial thing makes sense for some of us. Should we feel we are Sombeb or Sangbeb?

I am happy that the sign boards on the way to our village has got all right, "Sangbaykha Dungkhag". Kudos to Dungkhag administration.

The content of my post may not be agreeable to all of you but I leave it for my fellow Sanbgebs and concerned people to digest.